Chapter 399: At Wit's End

Because the Shunxiang Army artillerymen had nearly wiped out the Chuang Army cannons outside the west city, the gate tower above the west gate was safe once more.

Discovering this, Wang Yinchang and Garrison Commander Yang could not wait to move their command post back into the gate tower; after all, the bone-piercing cold on the city wall was unbearable, and with Chuang troops constantly leaping onto the wall, safety was a grave concern — returning to the tower meant both warmth and security.

Wu Zhengchun likewise moved his company command post into the gate tower, directing the battle by flag signal or through runners. At the same time, if soldiers on the wall were killed or wounded, he had the village braves and militia carry them into the tower, where Shunxiang Army medics gave them swift treatment.

Through years of development, the Shunxiang Army's medical and rescue system had advanced greatly, with many medical officers and medics; they had even opened numerous clinics in the towns and cities of the Eastern Route, treating soldiers' households and commoners for illness and injury at low prices.

Family members of soldiers enjoyed completely free care. The many welfare benefits in the army were one reason the people of the Eastern Route flocked eagerly to military service.

Wu Zhengchun stood at the tower window looking out at the wall; the slaughter below seemed to be nearing its end. Although Chuang soldiers kept leaping onto the wall, they were usually wiped out by the Shunxiang troops before they could even steady their footing.

Looking along the wall, whether left or right, the Shunxiang troops arrayed in two columns were like two winding monsters. The front column, bearing bird guns, was indestructible — every fierce foe was struck down before them by their firearms, and gunpowder smoke seemed to billow in long, unbroken rows.

Then, before the smoke had even cleared, the cold gleam of steel, a forest of bayonet-like spears, emerged from within the smoke or surged past it; the entire column of pikemen advanced like a single, uniform, slender forest of spears, and in the end every moving figure before them vanished.

Over and over, over and over, the two winding monsters devoured who knew how many enemies.

Up in the gate tower, Wang Yinchang, Garrison Commander Yang, and the others stared blankly, as if trapped in a nightmare.

The clamor on the city wall gradually quieted. More and more Luoyang officers and soldiers, along with village braves and militia, fell back, leaving the open ground on the wall for the Shunxiang troops to operate, willingly serving as their auxiliaries and lending a hand.

Their eyes were full of fear and awe — not fear of the Chuang soldiers, but fear of the Shunxiang troops who were slaughtering the enemy. Perhaps many could not understand: they were all soldiers, so why could the Shunxiang troops kill the enemy as calmly as strolling through a courtyard, while they themselves struggled so hard?

In the hand-to-hand combat just now, although they too had scored some kills, their results were far inferior to the Shunxiang Army's, and coordination among individuals was out of the question. They had inevitably suffered a steady stream of casualties; looking at the Shunxiang Army, some might have been wounded, but as for those killed in action, it seemed none had been seen yet.

The Shunxiang Army's outstanding combat strength and tactics, while shocking these Luoyang soldiers and civilians, also seemed to open a new world to them — so this was how battles could be fought.

Wu Zhengchun stood quietly, his dark, lean face expressionless, but the pride in his eyes could not be concealed. This was the army under his command.

Behind him came whispered murmurs — it was Garrison Commander Yang and his subordinate officers discussing this method of killing the enemy.

Wu Zhengchun smiled inwardly. Officers across the Great Ming, accustomed to relying on martial valor and personal retainers to fight, and holding the belief that "a thousand troops are easy to raise, but one general is hard to find," would likely find it difficult to grasp at once this tactic of mutual coordination and formation fighting drilled into the bone. Perhaps some of Garrison Commander Yang's personal retainers surpassed his own new army soldiers in individual martial prowess, but if they fought in formation, his troops would slaughter those valiant retainers as easily as butchering chickens.

The tactic of letting the enemy onto the city wall was also something these Luoyang soldiers and civilians were seeing for the first time. In their thinking, if the enemy scaled the wall, it usually meant the city was about to fall; a scene like the one before them was something rarely witnessed in a hundred years.

The principle was actually very simple: letting the enemy onto the wall was like fighting in formation on open ground — though this "open ground" was somewhat narrow — and what the Shunxiang Army feared least was fighting in formation. This set of tactics had proven effective as far back as Shunxiang Fort.

Watching the battle on the wall, Wu Zhengchun could not help recalling the days when he was still a common soldier, fighting the Tartars on the wall of Shunxiang Fort. Time had passed so quickly; in the blink of an eye, several years had gone by, and he had risen from a common soldier to a company commander, had married and fathered children, and was now the father of three sons.

Thinking of his wife and sons far away on the Eastern Route, a surge of tenderness rose in Wu Zhengchun's heart. He then steadied his mind, walked back to the front of the gate tower, and used his spyglass to survey the Chuang Army's situation outside the city.

The cheering outside the city had already ceased. Although beyond the rampart wall there was still a dense sea of bandit troops, an eerie silence now hung over them.

No wonder the Chuang soldiers and officers outside the city were like this; the scene on the wall was far too strange. By all logic, after so many scaling ladders had been raised earlier and dense swarms of their own troops had climbed up, the government troops should have collapsed before long, and then the Chuang banner would be raised on the wall, the city gates would open, and Luoyang would fall.

Yet a long while had passed, and there was no sign of movement on the wall. Not only that, but the soldiers who had climbed onto the wall, probably numbering several thousand by now, had all vanished as if into thin air. Apart from the constant crack of firearms and screams from above, there was no sign of their own fighters, nor any sign of their corpses. It was as if there was a gigantic devouring monster inside the city wall; no matter how many men went up, they were all swallowed clean in an instant.

An unspeakable terror gripped the hearts of the Chuang soldiers outside the city. Even the follow-up troops on the scaling ladders began to hesitate, unsure whether they should continue climbing.

Beside an earthen platform, Liu Fangliang also watched the wall with an ashen face. The chieftains around him were all whispering, speculating about what was happening on the west gate wall. Why was it that their own troops kept storming the wall, yet the government soldiers showed no sign of surrendering or collapsing?

And... why was there no reaction at all from the soldiers who had reached the top of the wall?

This truly defied common sense. Since Li Zicheng's resurgence the previous year, these Chuang chieftains, following under Li Zicheng's command, had captured city after city in Henan Prefecture. In the past, as soon as the rebel army reached the top of the wall, no matter how valiantly the government troops had defended, they would quickly panic and flee, resulting in an easy capture of the city. But now...

Only Liu Fangliang's face was grim as he gnashed his teeth. In his heart, he cursed bitterly: "Wang Dou, it's Wang Dou again, it's the Shunxiang Army again."

It was Liu Fangliang who had been directing these waves of Chuang troops attacking the city. Even before the assault on Luoyang, Liu Fangliang, who had fought Wang Dou before, had proposed the human-wave tactic to Li Zicheng. Relying on the Chuang Army's advantage of overwhelming numbers and easy replenishment of troops, they would use starving soldiers to attack the city continuously, wearing down the government forces inside.

The facts had proven the tactic successful and effective; their own troops had successfully reached the top of the wall. By past precedent, the capture of Luoyang today should have been a foregone conclusion. But the result had gone against their wishes. The only possible reason was that the defending Shunxiang Army had held them off on the wall.

He was filled with extreme hatred, knowing that his hopes had become an empty dream. Seeing the anxious look of the troops under his command, it was clear their morale was shattered, and with dusk approaching, today's battle would have to be called off in helpless resignation. He was about to give the order to sound the gongs and withdraw, when he suddenly heard a wave of panicked cries from the city. He hurriedly looked over, and his heart turned to ice.

He saw the government soldiers, who had long been unseen on the wall, reappear. They were hurling down corpse after corpse — among them their own foot soldiers and starving soldiers, the very fighters who had vanished after scaling the wall.

Corpses rained down from the wall; some were wounded men who had not yet died. They were flung heavily from the wall, letting out terrified, despairing wails in midair before hitting the ground and becoming piles of pulped flesh.

"Bandits, this is what becomes of you."

Corpse after corpse was thrown down, accompanied by chilling shouts from the wall. Whether the Chuang soldiers inside the rampart wall or those outside, every one of them stared dumbfounded, their hearts trembling. So all those brothers who had scaled the wall were dead — all dead — and now they were being thrown off the wall like this.

No one knew who reacted first, screaming and dodging the falling bodies, but soon panicked cries spread across the ground below the wall.

The falling corpses grew more and more numerous, quickly piling up in a thick layer outside the city. Many of the dead still wore expressions of dying with their eyes open, unable to rest in peace.

Seeing this, the Chuang soldiers collapsed. Though these peasant soldiers were frenzied for the sake of survival, that did not mean they were unafraid of death. On the contrary, they feared death greatly. The only reason they had thrown themselves forward was that there was no retreat behind them, no path to life, while ahead there was still hope.

But when there was no hope ahead either, they went mad — madly fleeing back.

Even the Chuang soldiers still on the scaling ladders screamed and jumped off, heedless of whether they might break their legs.

The Chuang troops assaulting the west gate reenacted the earlier wave of desperate flight. They wanted to flee back from inside the rampart wall, but the dense stream of people jammed together; everyone wanted to escape, no one was willing to fall behind, and so men trampled men, men trod upon men. No one knew how many were knocked down on the spot, only to have countless feet stampede over them; these men screamed as they were trampled alive into a heap of shredded flesh.

The peak of panic reached its height when the city gate opened and the government troops from the west gate charged out in pursuit. Inside and outside the rampart wall, on the moat bridge, and within the moat itself, layer upon layer of corpses lay piled, all crushed and trampled to death in the crush.

This wave of fleeing Chuang soldiers even swept into the Chuang Army's main formation by the earthen platform, forcing them to retreat another li before they could reform their lines. Countless long spears arrayed into formation, blocking the government troops from continuing their pursuit.

By conservative estimate, the Chuang Army's casualties in this wave of attacks likely approached ten thousand. Most importantly, the blow to their morale and fighting spirit was unparalleled. In siege warfare, every means is employed for the sake of reaching the top of the wall; even if the Chuang camp still had a series of siege tactics they had not yet deployed, it no longer mattered.

With the Shunxiang Army on the wall, what use was there even if they scaled it? It would only be a futile waste of their own men. It seemed that before them, even the attrition of starving soldiers was useless.

Moreover, the defeat in the assault on the west gate, and the gruesome deaths of several thousand soldiers, would likely soon spread through all the Chuang Army camps. After all, given the peasant army's organizational structure, there was simply no way to stop the spread of all kinds of panic and rumors. Would any starving soldiers still be willing to attack the city next time? After all, to eat their fill and wear warm clothes, they had to keep their lives, didn't they?